Moses vs. Hyperpreterism

There is great advantage in tracking the shape of God’s work in history through the Old Testament. This is because God is consistent. Everything He does has the same shape, even though He does it in new and surprising (and sometimes devastating) ways.

One of the big handles in Scripture is the five-fold Covenant pattern, described by Ray Sutton in his book, “That You May Prosper: Dominion by Covenant.”

Transcendence – God is distinct

Hierarchy – God delegates a representative

Ethics – He outlines the rules, the laws that, if kept, will bring success

Sanctions – He lists the blessings for obedience/curses for disobedience

Succession – Finally, he outlines the arrangements for the next Covenant “mission,” the next generation

Sutton uses Deuteronomy as his prime example of this structure. But it is found right throughout the Bible, including the five books of Moses, the Ten Commandments, the Psalms, Hosea, and Hebrews. It is even the foundation for the seven-fold Creation week and Feasts pattern, but that is beyond the scope of this post (the Ethics step gets split – “opened” – into three).

As a Covenant lawsuit, the book of Revelation also follows this structure:

Transcendence: Jesus is distinct from other men, as the divine, and first-glorified, man.

Hierarchy: Jesus assesses the sins beginning to sprout in His new goverment, the seven pastors.

Ethics: The New Covenant scroll is opened, and the Spirit is poured out upon the Land. It puts Judah on the Altar and sets her alight. (This is Firstfruits, Pentecost and Trumpets)

Sanctions: The seven bowls of Spirit-oil on the Law-Lampstand are carried out by the angels and tipped onto the Land one last time. It is an anti-Pentecost, for Israel’s blasphemy of the Spirit. The harlot drinks the cup and the bride is married to her Bridegroom. This takes us to the end of Revelation 19.

Succession: Here is the point of this post. Throughout the Old Testament, this final point details the future of the Covenant once this one is carried out. It concerns the next administration, the next generation, the “godly (or ungodly) offspring” of this first arrangement. It is the legacy in history of the obedience or disobedience of God’s people. Those who disobeyed are cut off by the Sanctions. Those who obeyed remain and prosper.

The final chapters of Revelation were not fulfilled in AD70. They are the outcome of the Sanctions poured out upon the Old Covenant, the judgment which brought it to an end. It was not a destruction of God’s people but a pruning.

So it is not inconsistent to claim that these chapters stand distinct in some way from the rest of the book. It is nothing new. It is the way God always presents His Covenant. He deals in securities and futures, and His lawyers include these in all their documents.

The Revelation, as the final warning in a Covenant lawsuit, is no different. Every Covenant has an element of futurism because the Covenant process is how God directs history and moves it forward. Moses helps us to identify which part of Revelation is yet future. To claim otherwise is to ignore the structure of the entire Bible. We can quibble about words and phrases forever. But structure is where the real answers lie, and they are damning for hyperpreterism.

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Available in June/July, Bible Matrix II: The Covenant Key explores the shape and use of this structure in the Scriptures, and shows how it is also the foundation of the Creation week/Feasts which were outlined in Bible Matrix.

About me

Mike Bull is a graphic designer who lives and works in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, Australia. His passion is understanding and teaching the Bible, and he writes occasionally for Theopolis Institute in Birmingham AL, USA.